One of the only reasons retiring House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy would return to politics would be to support Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolina Republican, for president.
“I will get back in politics if Tim Scott runs for president and he says, ‘Look, I need you to go to Iowa and New Hampshire and knock on doors,’ which he probably won’t because I’d hurt him. You know, if John Ratcliffe ran for governor of Texas and said, ‘Come help me,’ I would,” Gowdy told Fox News Wednesday. “But you’ll never see me on the ballot again.”
Gowdy, who will return to practicing law and teaching when his term expires in January, said he met Trump for the first time this week for a “wide-ranging conversation” touching on life, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the White House chief of staff position due to be vacated by John Kelly.
If Trump has a chief of staff candidate in mind, “he didn’t share with me,” Gowdy said.
Gowdy also said former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees last week was disappointing because of the number of times the fired bureau head told lawmakers he didn’t remember or didn’t know an answer to their questions.
“Comey just thinks he’s always right, and it doesn’t matter if [Justice Department Inspector General Michael] Horowitz thinks he’s wrong, and it doesn’t matter if everyone else concludes he did wrong, he knows better,” he said, describing Comey as a “political flunky” for his appeals to Americans to vote for Democratic candidates. “So that’s what it’s like to interview an amnesiac with incredible hubris.”
